Comedian Katherine Ryan has shockingly revealed that a fellow performer showed his explicit sex tapes to her and another stand-up just before a performance. The host disclosed that one of her female colleagues was left visibly disturbed after the male comic displayed the videos in the green room.

While Katherine refrained from identifying the individual, she described him as “very powerful, “very famous”, and “not British.”

The unsettling event occurred in the artists’ green room, a space where performers gather prior to appearing on a TV studio set or stage. Speaking on a podcast, 41-year-old Katherine recounted how she was among a small number of women present when the incident unfolded.

“He was very famous, very rich, very powerful,” Katherine remarked. The Canadian comedian further detailed: “He was in a room on a big show. I was one of very few women on that bill, maybe three women. And there was a young female comedian who was starting out who was next to him, and he was with all the lads, showing pictures and videos on his phone that he had taken of himself having sex with women.

“So, like, really intimate photos, intimate videos and he was showing them. His penis was in a lot of these videos.”, reports the Mirror.

During her conversation on the Niptuck podcast, the mother of two elaborated: “She felt very uncomfortable about that and then she came into my dressing room to be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t like him showing me that’ and she’s about to go on stage.

“She’s very new. I was even quite new at that time, but yeah, stuff like that and being a minority in that situation, which female comedians, especially when I was starting out, were always minorities.”

Displaying a sexually explicit image or video of someone without their consent constitutes image-based abuse.

The law targets the distribution of sexually explicit content, whether shared online, in person through photos or videos, or via text message. A new criminal act defines private materials as those showing things not normally seen in public.

This includes images exposing an individual’s pubic area, but also extends to pictures or videos of someone engaging in sexual acts or posing provocatively, according to the government.

The celebrity continued, explaining to the hosts that there are actions men can take in every green room that women cannot. “We can’t take a night bus. We can’t sleep on the floor with like, four other comedians starting out a lot of times,” she remarked.

Katherine further commented: “We have children that we have to look after, and then we get fans who, like, could kill us.”

She concluded by commending comedian Nikki Glaser for her ability to humorously navigate the difficult positions women face in the industry.

Katherine Ryan compared the situation to how a male comedian would not be subject to the same level of scrutiny. She said: “Nikki Glaser, who’s doing amazing in America and is hosting the Golden Globes for the second year in a row, she would make a joke of it on her Instagram,

“She’d be like, come kill me in Cincinnati at 7pm come kill me in San Diego. I’ll be here at 8pm we have to publish where we are at night, and we’re always alone. It’s a bit different.”

Katherine has previously spoken out about her own experiences with concerning male behaviour, revealing that in the early days of her career, she had a following of “strange lone-wolf men” who would often follow her, even to the train, and described some interactions as “scary.”